Thai security forces killed a soldier today after he carried out a shooting rampage that left at least 21 people dead, police and military sources said.

They said he had been killed at the shopping mall where he was holed up in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima.

“The police have killed the perpetrator and rescued eight hostages. Some were wounded,” said one of the security sources.

Both declined to be named because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

A member of the Thai security forces was killed earlier today in a raid into a shopping mall to try to stop the soldier, bringing the total death toll to 21, the health minister said.

Two other members of the forces were wounded during the raid, Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters from the Terminal 21 mall in the city of Nakhon Ratchasima.

Reuters video images showed one casualty being wheeled out to an ambulance. Another staggered from the building barechested as he was helped onto a stretcher.

The shooting spree began on Saturday afternoon when the soldier opened fire at a house before moving to an army base and then the shopping mall in Nakhon Ratchasima, which is about 250 km from the capital Bangkok, police said.

“We don’t know why he did this. It appears he went mad,” Defence Ministry spokesman Kongcheep Tantrawanit told Reuters.

Thai security forces stormed the mall late on Saturday to rescue hundreds of people trapped there. It was unclear how many shoppers and workers remained inside, Kongcheep said.

Police identified the suspect as Jakrapanth Thomma. During the attack, he posted “Death is inevitable for everyone” on his Facebook page and later asked, “Should I give up?”

Facebook said it had removed the suspect’s account.

“There is no place on Facebook for people who commit this kind of atrocity, nor do we allow people to praise or support this attack,” a Facebook representative said in a statement.

Major shootings are rare in the Southeast Asian country other than in the far south, where a decades-old insurgency persists.

Nakhon Ratchasima is one of the biggest cities in northeastern Thailand, an island of relative prosperity in a rice-growing area that is one of the poorest parts of the country of 69 million people. - Reuters